Awarta

Описание: Since I returned from my speaking trip abroad I wanted to visit the besieged village of Awarta. With a group of friends, we finally toured the devastated village yesterday and were stunned at what we saw and heard. On the way to Awarta, we stopped by a tiny village called Izbet Al-tabib, a village of 350 peope was served with a new order by the israeli military to take over a significant portion of their land. The wall that will be built and isolate this land behind it is supposed to "protect" the illegal highway 55, an Israeli road built already on Palestinian lands to erve the Jewish colonies built on the rich Western water aquifer of the Palestinian West Bank. Yet, instead of building the wall on the colonial road 55, it is to be built a long distance from that to the north side near the village houses with the idea of capturing the rich agricultural land between. The villagers do not know what to do beyond going to the biased Israeli courts run by Israeli judges that obviuously favor Israeli colonial interests. The work on the wall is slated to start Sunday and the villagers asked if we could all go there then. Leaving this small devastated village near Qalqilia, we headed east towards Nablus and Awarta.

After a quick lunch in Nablus hosted generously by our friend Dr. Saed Abuhijleh, we drove the short distance to Awarta. We enter the rich valley from the Western side and past the Israeli military camp and notice the colonial Jewish settements dotting the hilltops around the valley. The native village of 6000 brave souls is on the slope to north side of the valley and villagers have to face this scene of growing colonial settlements on their lands. The main colonial settlement built on stolen village lands is called by Jewish settlers Itamar. Over 12,000 dunums (4000 acres) of Awarta's lands were already taken by this colony inhabited by the most rabid and fanatical of Jewish settlers. Two Palestinains from Awarta were killed for coming within 500 meters of the fortified fencing of this colony. This is one of the many reasons why we are very convinced that the whole story about the killing of a settler family by two teenagers from the village of Awarta is a lie. But the killing of these settlers set stage for a ransacking of the village by the colonizing army of the state of Israel. Beating people, massive destruction, toture and more was inflicted on the village of 6000 people as collective punishment. It is hard to describe what we say and heard. The video just reveals a glimpse of it.

The village has already suffered repeated attacks from settlers in the past. Just last year, settlers and soldiers executed (shot at close range) two youths (18 and 19 year old cousins Salah and Muhamad Qawariq) who were working their agricultural field. Villagers asked us why there was no outrage and no one held accountable in any of these atrocities. We are all 100% convinced that that the settler family was not killed by the palsestinian teenagers that are claimed as culprits by the Israeli authorities. The story the colonial army gave is so full of holes that it is simply not plausible.

These and hundreds of other questions poured out from the villagers. I was particularly shocked to hear from Um Adam, a 77 year old grandmother (14 living children, over 75 grandchildren). She herself was arrested witrh hundreds of others and forced (like all of them) to take a DNA test and to put her fingerprints on a document in Hebrew that she does not read. She, like hundreds, were not a\llowed access to lawyers during their detention. 14 of her children and grandchildren are still kidnapped by the colonial soldiers. One of her Children still held by the Israelis is the volunteer head of the Municipal council. Another child is the only doctor in town. The homes of these two children, her home, and many other homes were ransacked and heavily damaged (the fascist soldiers had clearly come to destroy as an act of collective punishment). The doctor's room and his medical books and supplies were not spared.